A group of protesters is planning to set up tent encampments on Columbia University campuses this week in protest of the war in Gaza, according to three people familiar with the planning and a recording of a meeting to plan the action shared with NBC News.
The planned encampments come just over a year after students first erected about 50 tents on a university lawn to protest the war and drew the world’s attention.
Those demonstrations, in part, fueled the Trump administration’s effort to extract concessions from Columbia, saying the university failed to quell antisemitism on its campus.
Planning for the encampments has been shrouded in secrecy.
The coordinating meeting took place at a community center on Tuesday night in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood, approximately 12 miles from campus, according to screenshots of Signal messages from organizers and a person who was at the meeting.
Invitations for the meeting were largely distributed in person or verbally over the phone, according to the person who attended the meeting and asked not to be named due to fears of discipline from the school.
More than 100 people were present at the gathering and all wore masks to conceal their identities, according to the person. It is unclear if all of the participants were Columbia students, the person said.
The student organizers did not introduce speakers by name and instead used Signal usernames and code names — including the beloved Pokémon “Squirtle” and words such as “butterfly” — to distinguish one another, according to the recording.
Organizers have also refrained from referring to the upcoming encampments as “encampments,” according to screenshots of Signal messages from the organizers and conversations with two people familiar with the planning for the protests. In writing, and verbally, participants have designated the encampments with a code name, the “circus.”
Organizers asked demonstrators not to arrive on campus wearing masks on the days of the protests, which they said could alert campus security officers, according to the recording.
“This year feels so much more organized and careful,” the person who was at the meeting said.
Columbia did not confirm or deny whether it knew about the upcoming protests.
“Our focus is on protecting the safety of our community and ensuring that the University is able to proceed normally with all academic activities,” a university spokesperson said in a statement. “We are closely monitoring, as always, for any disruptions, and campus activities are currently proceeding as usual.”
The spokesperson added that encampments are against the university’s policies and participation could result in disciplinary action.
A demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag at a protest encampment on the quad of Columbia University last year.
Students are planning to erect an encampment on Thursday at the university’s main campus in Manhattan’s Morningside Heights neighborhood and a second encampment on Friday at the university’s nearby Manhattanville campus, according to the recording.
“When we take over the lawn, our goal is to unify the space and make it our own,” one of the organizers said, according to the recording.
Thursday’s encampment was planned to start at 1 p.m. on the West Butler Lawn of the university’s main campus, where encampments were set up last year, according to the recording, and disperse before nightfall or before police enter the campus.
There will be a second encampment that is expected to be more robust and begin the next day. It is unclear when the Friday encampment will begin, but according to the recording, students plan to stay indefinitely and expect arrests to be made.
Organizers chose to stage Friday’s encampment at the Manhattanville campus — the site of the university’s business school — because it is not gated off to outsiders, unlike the main campus, according to a person who attended the meeting.
A speaker at the meeting also said that the site of the second encampment was aimed at protesting the university’s gentrification of Harlem, according to the recording.
“Any action that we do will bring police, will bring repression and we thought about that deeply and we’re aware of that,” a speaker at the meeting said to applause. “And we’re stuck in this situation where inaction is also violence.”
Organizers of the upcoming protests have distributed several guidelines, obtained by NBC News, to student protesters. These guidelines cover legal risks associated with protesting, best practices for encounters with law enforcement and strategies for securing their digital presence.
The document on digital security advises that students communicate only through encrypted messaging services such as Signal, over the phone, or in person. It also suggests that students turn off Wi-Fi on their phones while protesting to avoid being traced by the university.
Another form shared by the organizers and obtained by NBC News asks students to provide “all the information necessary to support your legal defense” for their emergency contacts in the event of arrest.
The NYPD detains protesters from the pro-Palestinian protest encampment at Columbia University last year.
It asks for student protesters to list any medical conditions, insurance information, prescriptions, if they have dependents, where their government IDs are, their address and how emergency contacts can access their apartments or homes.
“Given the Trump Administration’s commitment to pursuing federal action against pro-Palestine protestors and the abduction of our comrade Mahmoud Khalil, we are now asking students to prepare not only for potential arrest and jail for several hours or overnight, but for the possibility of prolonged jail time,” the form reads. “Give serious thought to the question of how you would prepare for weeks or months in jail.”
The upcoming encampments precede a monthslong campaign of protests at the university last year, which inspired similar demonstrations at college campuses across the country and around the world. Dozens of students who participated in the encampments were arrested by local authorities or expelled from the university.
The protests were prompted by the Israeli military’s response to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks, in which more than 1,200 people were killed and about 250 were taken hostage, according to Israel. More than 51,000 people have been killed in Gaza and millions have been displaced in the war that followed, according to health officials in Gaza.
Student activists staged the demonstrations last year in an attempt to get their universities to divest from companies linked to the Israeli government.
The encampments also come amid the Trump administration’s push to intervene in Columbia’s affairs and some of the nation’s oldest higher education institutions. The federal government canceled the university’s federal grants on March 7, part of what the Trump administration says is a broader effort to “root out” antisemitism on college campuses.
In an effort to restore the grants, which fund dozens of universities’ top-tier research expeditions, Columbia agreed to a list of the administration’s demands on March 21.
The demands included instituting a mask ban at protests in most cases; hiring an outsider to oversee its department of Middle East, South Asian and African studies; committing to “greater institutional neutrality”; and enlisting three dozen new security officers with newly installed powers to arrest students.
Faced with its own deal by the Trump administration, Harvard University rejected the administration’s demands and sued the administration several days later, aiming to restore billions in funding.
The protests also come several weeks after federal immigration officials apprehended at least three Columbia students who participated in the student-led protests, including 30-year-old Mahmoud Khalil.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
